SPIN

windows like mortar rounds. 'But we need another hand.'

All I knew about brood stock and birthing I had learned from Molly Seagram's stories about life on her parents' farm. None of the stories had been particularly pleasant. At least Condon had set himself up with what I recalled as the necessary basics: hot water, disinfectant, obstetrical chains, a big bottle of mineral oil already stained with bloody handprints.

'She's part Angeln,' Condon said, 'part Danish Red, part Belarus Red, and that's only her most recent bloodline. But crossbreeding's a risk for 'dystocia'. That's what Brother Geller used to say. The word 'dystocia' means a difficult labor. Crossbreeds often have trouble calving. She's been in labor almost four hours. We need to extract the fetus.'

Condon said this in a distant monotone, like a man lecturing a class of idiots. It didn't seem to matter who I was or how I'd got here, only that I was available, a free hand.

I said, 'I need water.'

'There's a bucket for washing up.'

'I don't mean for washing. I haven't had anything to drink since last night.'

Condon paused as if to process this information. Then he nodded and said, 'Simon. See to it.'

Simon appeared to be the trio's errand boy. He ducked his head and said, 'I'll fetch you a drink, Tyler, sure enough,' still avoiding my eyes as Sorley opened the barn door to let him out.

Condon turned back to the cattle pen where the exhausted heifer lay panting. Busy flies decorated the heifer's flanks. A couple of them lighted on Condon's shoulders, unnoticed. Condon doused his hands with mineral oil and squatted to expand the heifer's birth canal, his face contorting with a combination of eagerness and disgust. But he had barely begun when the calf crowned in another gush of blood and fluid, its head barely emerging despite the heifer's fierce contractions. The calf was too big. Molly had told me about oversized calves—not as bad as a breech birth or a hiplock, but unpleasant to deal with.

It didn't help that the heifer was obviously ill, drooling greenish mucus and struggling for breath even when the contractions eased. I wondered whether I should say anything about that to Condon. His divine calf was obviously infected, too.

But Pastor Dan didn't know or didn't care. Condon was all that was left of the Dispensationalist wing of Jordan Tabernacle, a church unto himself, reduced to two parishioners, Sorley and Simon, and I could only imagine how muscular his faith must have been to sustain him all the way to the end of the world. He said in the same tone of suppressed hysteria, 'The calf, the calf is red—Aaron, look at the calf.'

Aaron Sorley, who was posted on the door with his rifle, came over to peer into the pen. The calf was indeed red. Doused in blood. Also limp.

Sorley said, 'Is it breathing?'

'Will be,' Condon said. He was abstracted, seemed to be savoring it, this moment on which he genuinely believed the world was about to pivot into eternity. 'Get the chains around the pasterns, quickly now.'

Sorley gave me a look that was also a warning—don't say a fucking word—and we did as we were instructed, worked until we were bloody up to our elbows. The act of birthing an oversized calf is both brutal and ludicrous, a grotesque marriage of biology and crude force. It takes at least two reasonably strong men to assist at an outsized calving. The obstetric chains were for pulling. The pulls had to be timed to the cow's contractions; otherwise the animal could be eviscerated.

But this heifer was weak unto death, and her calf—its head lolled lifelessly—was now obviously a stillbirth.

I looked at Sorley, Sorley looked at me. Neither of us spoke. Condon said, 'The first thing is to get her out. Then we'll revive her.'

There was a movement of cooler air from the barn door. That was Simon, back with a bottle of spring water, staring at us and then at the half-delivered stillbirth, his face gone startlingly pale.

'Got your drink,' he managed.

The heifer finished another weak, unproductive contraction. I dropped the chain. Condon said, 'You take that drink, son. Then we'll carry on.'

'I have to clean up. At least wash my hands.'

'Clean hot water in buckets by the hay bales. But be quick about it.' His eyes were closed, shut tight on whatever battle his common sense was conducting with his faith.

I rinsed and disinfected my hands. Sorley .watched closely. His own hands were on the obstetrical chain, but his rifle was propped against a rail of the stall within easy reach.

When Simon handed me the bottle I leaned into his shoulder and said, 'I can't help Diane unless I get her out of here. Do you understand? And I can't do that without your help. We need a reliable vehicle with a full tank of gas, and we need Diane inside it, preferably before Condon figures out the calf is dead.'

Simon gasped, 'It's truly dead?'—too loud, but neither Sorley nor Condon appeared to hear.

'The calf isn't breathing,' I said. 'The heifer's barely alive.'

'But is the calf red? Red all over? No white or black patches? Purely red?'

'Even if it's a fucking fire engine, Simon, it won't do Diane any good.'

He looked at me as if I'd announced his puppy had been run over. I wondered when he had traded his brimming self-confidence for this blank bewilderment, whether it had happened suddenly or whether the joy had drained out of him a grain at a time, sand through an hourglass.

'Talk to her,' I said, 'if you need to. Ask her whether she's willing to go.'

If she was still alert enough to answer him. If she remembered that I'd spoken to her.

He said, 'I love her more than life itself.'

Condon called out, 'We need you here!'

I drained half the bottle while Simon gazed at me, tears welling in his eyes. The water was clean and pure and delicious.

Then I was back with Sorley on the obstetric chains, pulling in concert with the pregnant heifer's dying spasms.

* * * * *

We finally extracted the calf around midnight, and it lay on the straw in a tangle of itself, forelegs tucked under its limp body, its bloodshot eyes lifeless.

Condon stood over the small body a little while. Then he said to me, 'Is there anything you can do for it?'

'I can't raise it from the dead, if that's what you mean.'

Sorley gave me a warning look, as if to say: Don't torture him; this is hard enough.

I edged to the door of the barn. Simon had disappeared an hour earlier, while we were still struggling with a flood of hemorrhagic blood that had drenched the already sodden straw, our clothing, our arms and hands. Through the open wedge of the door I could see movement around the car—my car—and a blink of checkered cloth that might have been Simon's shirt.

He was doing something out there. I hoped I knew what.

Sorley looked from the dead calf to Pastor Dan Condon and back again, stroking his beard, oblivious of the blood he was braiding into it. 'Maybe if we burned it,' he said.

Condon gave him a withering, hopeless stare.

'But maybe,' Sorley said.

Then Simon threw open the barn doors and let in a gust of cool air. We turned to look. The moon over his shoulder was gibbous and alien.

'She's in the car,' he said. 'Ready to go.' Speaking to me but staring hard at Sorley and Condon, almost daring them to respond.

Pastor Dan just shrugged, as if these worldly matters were no longer pertinent.

I looked at Brother Aaron. Brother Aaron leaned toward the rifle.

'I can't stop you,' I said. 'But I'm walking out the door.'

He halted in midreach and frowned. He looked as if he were trying to puzzle out the sequence of events that had brought him to this moment, each one leading inexorably to the next, logical as stepping stones, and yet, and yet…

His hand dropped to his side. He turned to Pastor Dan.